By Paul Myerberg for USA TODAY Sports and the Detroit Free Press.
The College Football Playoff was created to print money, first and foremost, with the added benefit of streamlining what had long been a frustrating and unsatisfying race for the national championship.
There were at least two polls and several dozen bowls before the new postseason format made its debut in 2014, and there was always controversy. Think 2004, the year Auburn went unbeaten in the SEC but didn’t play for the title, or remember 2011, the year of the rematch between LSU and Alabama.
Go back further, even before the start of the Bowl Championship Series format in 1998. A year earlier, Michigan and Nebraska shared the national championship between the two deciding polls — Michigan won the Associated Press vote, Nebraska the Amway Coaches Poll.
Georgia Tech and Colorado shared the honors in 1990. Miami (Fla.) and Washington were co-champions in 1991. Decades later, the debate rages on. This level of controversy can be good for a sport, but only to a point.
If the split championship in 1997 paved the way for the BCS, seasons such as 2004 and 2011 ushered in the playoff era. Four teams, not two, and two games, not one. By expanding the field, the College Football Playoff planned to eliminate the guesswork involved in selecting the nation’s best team.
And the Playoff was made for years like this, where one team stands high above the rest — that would be unbeaten and seemingly unstoppable Alabama — but multiple contenders hold a case for being placed in a winner-take-all championship game.
The Playoff format created room for four. Tasked with selecting the nation’s best teams, the 12-person selection committee opted for No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 Clemson, No. 3 Ohio State and No. 4 Washington, with the Crimson Tide and Huskies meeting in the Peach Bowl and the Tigers and Buckeyes in the Fiesta Bowl.
On its face, it’s an almost inarguable quartet. Alabama has lapped the field, winning five more games than the second-place team in the SEC. Saturday’s 54-16 romp against Florida was the latest indication of the gap between the Crimson Tide and the rest of the field.
Clemson defeated nine bowl teams in winning the ACC, with impressive victories against Auburn, Louisville and Florida State. Washington notched wins against Washington State and Colorado to end the regular season and improve upon its middling strength of schedule.
“The strength of schedule of Washington has been a concern for this selection committee,” chairman Kirby Hocutt said. “But what we talked about this morning was the quality wins Washington has this year. They’ve played good teams and they’ve beaten good teams.”
But this is college football. Years pass, postseason formats change and powers come and go, all tied together by one common thread: controversy.
This year’s debate centers on Ohio State and Penn State, raising questions about the importance of head-to-head matchups and conference championships in the Playoff era.
The Nittany Lions hold the edge in both categories. On Oct. 22, Penn State scored a 24-21 upset of Ohio State. The victory boosted Penn State from afterthought to the thick of the championship race. On Saturday, the Nittany Lions reversed a 21-point deficit to defeat Wisconsin 38-31 and win its first outright Big Ten championship since 1994.
“I think that’s the hard part,” Penn State coach James Franklin said. “We sat in there as a team and listened to all the points that were made. I think you can make arguments a lot of different ways based on your perspective.”
Here’s where Penn State’s candidacy is at its strongest: in the comparison against Ohio State in two key factors, the win in October and the win in December. These can be used as deciding factors, say the Playoff’s selection criteria — but they weren’t enough to lift the Nittany Lions past Ohio State in 2016.
The reality of the matter is that Penn State’s title hopes suffered a fatal blow on Sept. 10, when rival Pittsburgh outlasted the Nittany Lions in a 42-39 win. Teams can afford to lose once in conference play, but losing a non-conference matchup is another story; in the three-year history of the Playoff, just one team, Ohio State in 2014, has lost a non-conference game and reached a national semifinal.
And it’s obvious, based on Ohio State being seeded third, that the committee never viewed the Buckeyes and Nittany Lions as comparable teams despite the head-to-head result. The rankings revealed that Penn State was closer to Washington than Ohio State; the Buckeyes have been a lock since beating the Wolverines.
The larger takeaway asks what role conference championships might hold in the future. The Big Ten was, without question, the strongest conference in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Penn State was its champion, and the victor against the Big Ten representative, Ohio State.
Let’s rephrase that for added emphasis: The champion of the nation’s best league was trumped by the league’s runner-up, and defeated that same team during the regular season.
Maybe these achievements are tossed aside in pursuit of the Playoff’s endgame: finding the four best teams in the country, all other caveats notwithstanding. Remember that the last time a team made the four-team field amid intrigue was Ohio State itself in 2014 — and the Buckeyes went on to win the national championship.
“Conference championships are hard to win,” Hocutt said. “As a selection committee, we come down to our mission, our focus and that’s to select the four very best teams in college football. Conference championships are only one piece, one metric of that conversation that we have.”
So maybe the committee knows what it’s doing. Picking the four best teams in college football is an inexact science, after all. And this is college football, which throughout its history holds one constant: controversy.
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